Archive for April, 2012

The artist giving a tour about the company Artists Incorporated based out of New York City. An agency for the top portrait artists in the country. If you won the lottery and wanted to have the best in the country paint your portrait you would see this agency.

Below the artist talks briefly about his career as a professional artist.

The artist has had a long and prosperous career. He was born in 1926. He started off his career working in the comic book industry. His sketches with a simple pen and paper are great fun to look at. For the drawings its awesome to see the line work, some of the lines are curved on the end, this gives the drawing a wide variety of edges. I like to compare Kinstler’s pen work to drawings of Albert Durer.

Has done many paintings of United States Presidents. These include Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagen, Richard Nixon, and both Bush presidents. These works remind me so much of Sargent. I highly recommend buying this artist’s video lessons. With a very simple palette of cadmium red, cadmium yellow, white, and blue he paints a wonderful face.

Started working as a professional artist at the age of 16. He drew comic book illustrations as well as designing magazine covers. He also took classes at the Art Students League of New York. Later, he became a teacher at the League. At the League his mentor was Frank DuMond.

Some names of the comic book characters he worked with as an illustrator are the Black Hood, the Black Terror, Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch, Jesse James, Silvertip, Zorro, Murderous Gangsters, Kit Carson, Geronimo, the Phantom Witch Doctor, Wild Bill Hickok, the Masked Bandit, and Wyatt Earp. This is just a short list, he worked on many more but I thought these might be the most familiar. As far as genres he worked mainly with western and war themes.

low price range: If you are adept at online auctions you can find pen and ink original drawings for around $1,000. Many beautiful women and fantastically drawn horses are some good subjects to watch for in looking to see great compositions from the artist.

high price range: Here is a link to the website of Masters of Portrait Art. He is one of the artists included and prices start at $25,000 per person. Its a great website to see what the best figure artists in the country are charging. The company offers a variety of mediums from drawing, painting, to sculpture. Some charge into the six figure range per person so you can see what styles that portrait collectors are happy to pay the most for.

For your art homework take a few colors, cadmium red, cadmium yellow, white, and blue. See if you can a couple of hours and do a great sketch of a figure.

Another great sculptor that loved working with quite ordinary or ugly people doing their basic daily chores. He is considered the Pop Art of sculpture.

Found his own technique of painting around age of forty.

A show for the artist in 2009.

A piece titled ” Drug Addict” by the artist.

A brief biography about the artist.

low price range: $50,000

high price range: $410,000

mediums used: sculpture with resin,fiberglass, Bondo ( a polyester resin that is used to repair cars and wood)

The artist was born in 1925 in Minnesota. He attended several colleges. Luther College, University of Washington, and finishing at Malcalaster College. For his masters studies he attended the Cranbrook Academy of Art.

Started to work in the mid 1960s casting figures from fiberglass and vinyl, similar to the technique that John Andrea was using. His works in the late 1960s had a theme of disaster and violence. Riots due to race, abortion done in back alleys, and Vietnam. He would cast the figures in fiberglass, paint them, then dress them in second hand clothes. In the 1970s he began to work with every day people not doing violent acts but rather in their everyday life.

His work titled Woman Eating is in the Smithsonian Museum collection.

The artist lived in New York City in the late 1960s and moved to Florida in 1973 and would live out his life there. He passed away in 1996.

I was able to find books about the artist and they are in the gallery. On amazon the two hardcover books started at $30 and the paperback titled written with Martin Bush was going for $3.

Please take a few minutes to watch the videos of this outstanding artist. I love these sculptures as they are true representations of the time period from the person and their hair style to the clothes they were. I have tremendous respect for the artisans who make wax figures, but similar to John DeAndrea the way these artist applied paint to make the characters have a convincing and realistic skin tone amaze me to this day. And the touch of adding the second hand clothes and to capture the esseance of a person and figure rather than exaggerate beauty is a refreshing change in modern art. This artist was able to see the beauty that exists in all of us as we go through our daily chores such as mowing the lawn, going grocery shopping, or mending clothes.

If you are at the Smithsonian please try to find this artist, you won’t be sorry!

Below is a clip showing works by the first two artists I will be profiling in this section about the figure in art. John DeAndrea and the late Duane Hanson will be my first two subjects.

This artist is known for his fantastic life size bronzes of women, most are nude. Many times he enhances the human feel of his sculptures by painting the skin tones with oils.

Born in 1941 in Denver, Colorado.

Earned BFA at the University Colorado at Boulder. Started work for masters program at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. He made friends with a student that was casting fiberglass to make kayaks. This forced the artist to look at sculpture differently and for it to become his medium of choice. He quit the graduate program and decided to move back to Denver, Colorado.

When the artist was first mastering his technique he cast the molds in vinyl and fiberglass and then finished them using automotive paints, this was the technique used to make the kayaks. Some of the people have a highly reflective quality to the skin, making them seem wet. Years later he switched to using latex acrylic paint and started producing the works we are familiar with today. He even uses real hair for the head to give extra detail into the artwork. He uses polyvinyl and polychromed bronzes.

First one person show was in New York City back in 1970.

Most of his works deal with the nude and very fit women. Some works show an artist who is clothed and a model who is nude. He uses such items as plastic, polyester, glass fiber, and gympsum.

Gained world wide attention for sculptures depicting people making love. These were thought provoking because it showed the difference between sex for men and women. For women that sex was highly emotional and that for men the act was more physical than emotional. He portrayed this idea very well.

Art critics compare his work to the Greeks, but I would argue DeAndrea makes subtle caricatures of the people making them more realistic than invented. If you were to see Michelangelo’s David walking down the street you would be surprised by his anatomy, its unlike a man you would see walking the streets. DeAndrea tries to capture the individual characteristics of a person sometimes exaggerating skin tone, long legs, and large breasts. Duane Hanson worked with people that were ugly or at least very far from what passes at beautiful in any modern day culture.

Has works in museums in Scotland, Australia, and Mississippi in the United States.

As far as sculpture is concerned this artist will always be one of my favorites. Dolls are nice, but these works are life size. I love the attention to detail and lengths the artist goes to capture the moment and persona of each individual.

So lets talk about this modern painting family of Hall Groat I and II.

Today we will talk about the son, Hall Groat II, painter of food still lifes as well as landscapes.

He has some instructional painting DVDs for sale and here is a clip where he studies a pear painting of John Singer Sargent.

A clip showing 365 of the artists paintings in 2 minutes time. Too fast to really capture the paintings please watch and pause when you find a food subject you would like to see in detail. For instance upon seeing the chocolate kisses by the artist I stopped the video and compared them to kisses painted by Scott Fraser who I detailed not long ago who sometimes paints the kisses on a copper background.

The artist giving a painting demo on painting fabric. A four minute clip from a two hour dvd he has on the market.

The artist lives in Manilus, New York. He was born in 1967. Has wanted to become a professional artist since the age of 12, his father being a internationally collected painted Hall Groat.

The best thing we can learn from this artist is the composition. He places cheesecakes in just the right place, pointing them towards the corners but not exactly toward the corners. If you were to run a diagonal line from corner to corner and place a cheesecake on this line pointing towards the viewer that would be a good design. If you were to move the line so it ended up close to the corner it will give your artwork another dimension. Notice how the silverware or triangular shaped desserts use this design skill to make the paintings seem larger than their small size. Many of the works listed are 11 by 14 inches and many are 5 by 7 or 8 by 10 inches.

When I started to paint the still life I also tried to keep the perfect circle of a plate, or even an entire ellipse. This artist shows us its better to crop the picture and make an interesting organic shape of your own.

Groat II went to college at City University at New York earning a masters degree in fine arts. He also took classes at Syracuse University, Buffalo State University, and Savannah College of Art and Design. The artist is a professor of fine and media arts at Broome Community College.

A great teacher of the arts he has produced 27 DVDs and sold more than 18,000 copies! A great business artist who is highly skilled at painting food. One entire DVD, DVD 23 teaches how to paint great desserts.

Nothing I enjoy more than talking about art made from members of the same family. The best family business in the world. Your child emulates your techniques and you get to spend time with them teaching. In the United States we have a few art families such as the Peale family known for wonderful still lifes and paintings of famous people such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. The Wyeth family, Andy died a few years back but the still lifes of both Andy, Jamie, and the Wyeth sisters show very high levels of talent. My favorite painters of snow and the city, the Wiggins family. Guy Wiggins is in his nineties and still painting! Lastly we have the Gruppe family known for painting the East Coast areas of the United States. These families have produced great artists for at least 3 generations.

Jan Weenix the elder and the younger were a father and son duo of the Netherlands who gained acclaim for their paintings of fowl and other animals. When I think of bird artists I think of live birds painted by Camille Engel or Isabelle du Toit. The Weenix painters seem to capture the moment in time when the animal has just been killed and is ready to prepare for a meal. Though the animals are dead they seem to have a very fresh and lively feel to them. Its as if the rigor mortis and stiffening of the body has been mysteriously avoided.

The records kept during the 1600s wasn’t very good so the exact dates escape us but the Jan Weenix the younger was born around 1621 in Amsterdam. The artist died around the age of forty. He was a very prolific painter with many capable of painting many genres. He was one of the first Dutch artists to paint Italian harbor scenes. He also became known for painting dead fowl. Father was an architect. The artist had speech impediments making him a loner type. Studied in Rome for a short period of time before moving to Utrecht. Died around 1660.

Jan Weenix the younger was born around 1640. He was raised in a castle the family owned in Utrecht. He was a very capable student and many works that were thought to be of the father have now been accredited to the Jan Weenix the Younger. Had thirteen children, 3 died at a young age.

If you are in London make sure to see some of this artist’s wonderful works with game and animals at the National Gallery and also the Wallace Collection.

Next time you see a bird painting check out the feathers! My two favorite Golden Age painters of feathers are Weenix and Durer, we can learn many lessons from viewing any works of these artist. For Durer my favorite work is the hare. The rabbit’s essence is captured perfectly.

This artist is similar to Robert Jackson in that both take a very humorous approach to painting. The works of this artist not only have the tools of great painting such as color and composition, but in most of his works he makes references to artists of the past.

One picture to look at is the first one in the gallery. A non chain movie theater with one of Andy’s most famous works, Marilyn Monroe. The marquee even makes a mention of Andy’s old study in the 1960s, the silver factory. A similar idea is made when the artist uses Marilyn on what seems to be a very old and weather worn farm building.

In the second painting from the top we have Munch’s famous painting the Scream. If you remember the television series Roseanne, one of the kids had it hanging in their bedroom. Here it is used as a logo for a fictitious beverage company.

Although the artist is realist I love the fact he paid homage to Abstract painters of well. The work which I remember about the artist the most was this fantastic work with a spray painted image ( the artist painted it so it looked spray painted) of Jackson Pollack and it is titled Jack the Ripper. This man loves art history. For those of us who love art history each work might be considered a “rebus.” A rebus is a puzzle made of signs or symbols. Its great fun to see if you can recall names of the artists who he refers to.

The artist was born in 1977 in Kennewick, Washington. He attended college at the University of Utah studying painting and drawing. He now lives and works in Halper, Utah.

Another favorite series of paintings by the artist are those that mix children’s drawings books with famous figures of the art world. In one artwork the makes reference to the Ma and Pop farm couple done by Grant Wood. In another made up children’s book he makes reference to Andy Warhol. Yet another wonderful piece was done with Chuck Close as the subject with cigarettes lying on top. By leaving the coloring semi finished the piece has a super fresh feel to it.

He has appeared in national art magazines American Art Collector and Southwest Art. Southwest Art named him one of the 21 artists under 31 years of age to watch.

No art homework today, relax and do some drawing. Just a pen or pencil and white sheet of paper!

This artist paints landscapes as well as food still lifes. I enjoy her paintings of donuts and ice cream. She has a unique approach many times painting donuts just after someone has taken the first bite. Although the artist paints fresh ice cream cones she also paints melted ice cream cones, giving the viewer a new take on an old subject. Most times she paints the doughnut as if the viewer is looking down upon it, another innovative design technique.

On the website she talks about the doughnut series. The circle of the doughnut represents eternity to the artist. A few years ago she had a life threatening illness and now she appreciates life even more. I myself had tremendous problems with diabetes, it took a long while but finally I was back to normal and with a work ethic better than ever. As for the doughnuts she painted them with a bite missing to symbolize the hands on a clock and how each minute of life should not be taken for granted.

When thinking of herself and her place in the art world she quotes Vincent Van Gogh and his saying ” The only time I feel alive is when I am painting!” She thinks of painting as being as essential to life as food or water. I agree! You can never see enough art!

The artist also takes commissions.

Paul attended college at California State in Northridge. She also studied at the Los Angeles Academy of Figurative Arts. She also attended the Chouinard School of Fine Arts. She worked in the animation industry painting backgrounds, Thomas Kinkade also made the leap from background animation artist to fine art. In the past she also has painted murals.

Paul also has been in national art magazines such as American Art Collector.

She will be in an upcoming show for the National Orange Show in San Bernardino, California. In the past year she was also included the Women’s City Club of Pasadena for some floral paintings.

This artist has a great technical background as well as great use of color. A great painter of many subjects with a very keen eye for design. She has had so many top level professors as well as working in the illustration industry to help her sense of design.

For today’s art homework think ahead to your next breakfast. How about some toast or a bagel? After you have toasted the bread, take a bite and then draw or paint it.

The artist was born in Parkersburg, West Virginia. Now lives and works out of New York City.

Hovnanian had her first show in Chicago in 2011 at the Carrie Secrist Gallery.

The artist tries to get people to think about ideas we take as being “normal.” Opening a magazine and looking thru page after page about how to lose weight or lose wrinkles. She tries to get people to see past the superficial ideas. For an installation artist she makes the viewer have many thoughts about her works. In this world of connectivity and the internet it seems people all around the world want to chase beauty either for money or power or both. Her message is universal in any language, the world is consumed by beauty, which from my artistic point of view isn’t a bad thing!

Some items normally represented in her work that have to do with beauty are tiaras, swimsuits, trophies and the narcissus flower. She loves to poke fun of modern advertising and its cure all solutions for showing any signs of age. She did this in a photographic series dealing with Texas Beauty Cream.

The artist has been well taught at by many working professional artists. She has attended Parsons School of Design, the Art Students League of New York City, the National Academy of Design, and the University of Texas.

The artist has been featured in the New York Times and Elle Decor. She has been part of shows the last few years in exciting cities such as Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Shanghai , London, Madrid, Barcelona, and Antwerp. It seems for installation artists there might be more opportunities to sell works overseas. With its flourishing economy Asia has seen records amounts of art sold in traditional ink to modern art such as video and installation series.

I enjoy this artist for her always increasing her use of different mediums and for making people think more about the many media ads portraying women whose image has been photoshopped. I imagine she could do awesome pictures about women eating chocolate and gaining a bunch of weight. She has a great mind for seeing what works in the commercial advertising world.

This artist used to live in California but now makes his home up north in Canada. I enjoy his varieties of food that he paints. Very fresh and still wet seafood alongside candy canes and other packaged candy in wonderfully reflected plastic. He now makes his home in Toronto, Canada.

He has very unique composition ideas with knives pointing to split bagels and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. He tends to paint the surface as a highly reflective and glossy. His works have a wide variety of different textures as well. Most of these paintings were sold directly from his website and many works are 8 by 10 or 5 by 7. A perfect addition to any collection!

The website covers his paintings he has done from 2008 to present day.

Try taking a small canvas maybe 8 by 10 or 5 by 7 and work hard at making a strong composition with simple shapes. If you feel strong enough try to incorporate 4 different textures into your artwork. It could be wood texture for a table, a lifesaver in plastic wrap, and a linen or napkin.

The artist was a great businessman and was a celebrity spokesman for many products. In this short clip he is working for Burger King and eating one of their sandwiches.

See the many commercial replicas of Warhol’s soup cans here. Pins, prints, and even a souper dress made from Campbells soup labels. It was their way of going green back in the 60s and 70s, recycled clothing. If you are in Denver you can see one of these dresses at the Vance Kirkland Art Museum.

Overall I think this artist is my favorite. He loved the idea of the business of being an artist. He was super successful as a commercial artist. He went on to produce wonderful independent films. He accomplished many dreams in his life going from rags to riches but never got to Hollywood.

I often think to myself the internet was tailor made for Andy.

The artist was born in 1928 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and he died in 1987 from complications during a surgery. He was nearly killed by a woman who had sent him a screenplay to be made into a film.He lost the play and kept telling her he would send it in the mail. The lady went to the factory and shot Warhol, who thought for sure he was dying. He was taken to the hospital and an Italian doctor recognized the artist and led an operation team that worked on him for five hours.

He attended college at Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania from 1945 to 1949. Right after college he moved to New York City, had many roomates, and started to establish himself as a commercial artist.

First solo show dealt with Truman Capote and it was in 1952.

Warhol founded the Interview magazine in 1969. Went to the School of Visual Arts in New York City in 1978.

He made his own television show for cable in 1982. He created a show called Fifteen Minutes for MTV in 1986. He was so far ahead of his time, MTV now shows far more reality television than new music videos.

The artist’s works are similar to the Dow Jones in that by following sales of his works one can view the strength of the art market as a whole. Warhol made a painting titled the Nine Elvises and it was sold for 100 million dollars.

For todays art homework go to your favorite ice cream parlor, order your favorite dessert, and then paint or draw it first!